1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to medical surgical accessories and, more particularly, to a lightweight organizer that may be readily secured to a sheet or surgical drape to efficiently retain and organize sutures during surgery.
2. Description of the Related Art
During surgery, a surgeon needs ready and efficient access to sutures. Traditional suture handling practice has been considered inefficient, clumsy and wasteful. Often sutures were laid out on towels and passed individually to the surgeon when needed. The sutures became entangled and difficult to separate; the suture supply was sometimes spilled or upset. As a result, a number of devices for dispensing packaged sutures have been developed. Examples of such devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,261 issued Apr. 20, 1976 to Mandel et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,284,194 issued Aug. 18, 1981 to Flatau; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,699,271 issued Oct. 13, 1987 to Lincoln et al.
Related devices which lay out and retain sutures in a neat and organized fashion before they are needed have been developed. These devices enable the surgical scrub nurse to deftly grasp an individual suture and pass it to the surgeon. However, the surgeon typically attaches numerous sutures to the patient before tying or knotting and cutting the individual sutures. The sutures are typically extended away from the surgical field and laid out on the surgical drape, the sutures being somewhat immobilized by a surgical clamp which is secured to the free end of each suture. Some operations such as vascular surgery require numerous fine sutures which can easily soon crowd the surgical field and become entangled before the surgeon can tie them. Untangling the sutures delays completion of the surgery and increases the trauma of the patient.
Thus there is a need for a device that will neatly and efficiently organize and retain sutures during surgery. Examples of such devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,185,636 to Gabbay et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 3,515,129 to Truhan. In the Gabbay et al. device, each suture is frictionally retained by a foam insert in a leg. In the Truhan device, the sutures are retained by wings. It takes considerable manipulation to place the suture in the retaining legs of the Gabbay et al. device, and there is nothing to prevent the sutures from becoming dislodged in the Truhan device. As well, these and similar devices have proven expensive to manufacture and include features which may damage delicate sutures.